


Moonless, Starless

by dear_tiger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Horror, M/M, post-S3 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_tiger/pseuds/dear_tiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-S3 AU, in which Hell unknowingly trades Dean Winchester for SpongeBob SquarePants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonless, Starless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killabeez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/gifts).



> Dean's poem is by Rabia al-Basri, translated by Charles Upton.

Dean was having a dream in Hell. Dreams were expensive and a rare find, and he couldn’t quite remember how he came by this one. He didn’t remember what he paid this time either. The humans in Hell who got their hands on a dream would rather dream it than sell it, and the ones that did sell them were mostly psychopaths who set steep prices. Still, it was smarter to trade with a human than a demon, who didn’t sleep and wanted none for themselves but often slipped you straight-up nightmares just for shits. Who did he buy this one from? He trusted his waking self not to be a complete dumbass and trade with someone like Marmaduke again, but still.

Trust in Allah but tie down your camel, Dean thought, hiding a kitchen knife behind his back. This could go either way.

He dreamed of Bobby Singer’s house, and of the large kitchen in it with unwashed windows, like it was early spring and still too cold to get them shiny, and of the old dining table piled high with books, and of hiding under that table with a six inch tomato knife in his hand. You could do a lot of damage with a tomato knife.

Everywhere but the kitchen was pitch black, unnatural. No moonlight shone through the living room windows, and there didn’t seem to be a living room beyond a few inches outside the kitchen’s doorway. The moonless, starless sky was indistinguishable from the black earth outside. Bobby’s kitchen was floating in a black hole, but inside was a warm and cozy electrical light that Dean missed so much. And Sam was washing dishes. 

Dean twisted his neck into a goddamn pretzel trying to see him from under the table. Sam was standing with his back to him, hands moving in the suds, cleaning dishes and stacking them in the next sink, elbows working, tempting Dean to reach out and grab them. He was wearing old faded jeans with the frayed hems and a flannel shirt, like an icon of everything Dean missed so much there were no words for it. His hair stuck out, uncombed. In the dark window that was as good as a mirror, Dean watched his lowered face and waited for it to twist and melt, for blood to run out of his eyes, but no matter how hard he looked, it was only Sam. There was a pale scar on the back of his right elbow, from a metal fence when he was thirteen. Dean traced it with his finger in the air – it was exactly the right shape.

Sometimes, when Sam turned to put a plate away, he’d give Dean a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. Dean sat very still in his shadows under the dining table. The house was quiet, except for the splashing of water in the sink. 

This could go either way. Dean wasn’t stupid enough to buy a dream from Marmaduke again, but even the dreams humans sold could go south. They didn’t sell rotten ones on purpose, but dreams went rotten all on their own all the time here. Dean was just hoping for a stupid neutral one, in which Sam washed dishes and he watched Sam from under the table and nothing happened. He’d love that.

There was a guy, long-dead, some moldy university professor from the last century who traded Dean classic rock songs for poetry. Any entertainment was good in Hell, and Dean wasn’t about to start watching a fire burn inside an old TV carcass or some pathetic shit, like in _The Terminator_. No, thanks. He’d bellow out his favorites and play the leg guitar, and in return he got poetry he’d never heard before. _O my Lord, the stars glitter/ And the eyes of men are closed./ Kings have locked their doors/ And each lover is alone with his love./ Here, I am alone with You._ He liked that one. He recited it to himself for goodnight sleep, whenever he snagged a dream from someplace, because it reminded him of calm and comfortable intimacy.

_Here,_ he repeated, _I am alone with you._ And then, “Hi, Sam.”

Sam dropped a dish and turned around with a smile so wide it would crack his skull in another minute. Dean wasn’t sure what might happen next, so he waited with the tomato knife in a tight grip. Sam probably picked up on the nonverbal clues because didn’t come any closer. Instead, he planted his hands on the counter where Dean could see they were empty, and twisted his neck like Dean to see under the table. 

“Hey, Dean. You coming out?”

Sam’s smile did seem a little too wide, too toothy. Had it always been like this and Dean just got out of habit of seeing it? Dean shook his head. “Not just yet. Would you – with the dishes?”

Sam nodded and turned around again, picked up a plate and a sponge. He scraped at it half-heartedly, more for show. Something was happening, Dean decided. The dream was progressing, whether he wanted it or not. It made no sense to keep sitting under the table. Slowly, he made his way out, into the light. _Kings have locked their doors,_ he prayed to no one specific, _and each lover is alone with his love._ He had designated the poem as a prayer for goodnight sleep, and if you believed in something strongly enough, it came true. 

Three steps separated him from Sam, who had forgotten his pretense at dish-washing and was standing stiff and still. Dean put the knife down on the table. Nothing happened. He took a step forward, and another one. _Alone with his love,_ went the loop inside his head. _Here, I am alone with you – alone with you – alone with you._ He took that final step, and now his toes were almost touching Sam’s heels. Slowly, Dean rocked forward and let his forehead rest against the back of Sam’s neck. The collar of Sam’s shirt smelled of laundry detergent, and Sam’s skin smelled like Sam, like that one thing Dean was missing that, if he could have it back, would make everything good again. 

_…the stars glitter. And the eyes of men are closed._

“Can I turn around?” Sam said.

“Yeah, okay.”

Sam turned slowly, never moving from where Dean was crowding him against the sink, and then somehow they had their arms around each other, and Dean didn’t notice how it happened, when their bodies just clicked together. He was breathing into Sam’s hair, with Sam’s stubble scratching his cheek, Sam’s fingers pressing bruises into his shoulders. When he woke up, he was going to give himself these bruises, to remember. Shit, this was some dream, he thought, locking his arms around Sam tighter, loving the pain and the chest constriction of a return bear hug that made it hard to breathe. 

Just as easily, almost moving on muscle memory, it turned into a kiss, with Sam’s fingers digging into his jaw. _Oh,_ Dean thought, trying to keep up, _oh this._ He had somehow forgotten this, and now everything was moving too fast. His hand in Sam’s hair, Sam’s under his shirt, their hips pushed together, and suddenly it was too much. Dean wanted that quick fuck against the kitchen counter – who would turn down a dream like that in Hell? – but something broke right there, like this was too good to be true, like his brain refused to believe it and shut down his body. Sam could, at any moment, grow an alligator jaw and bite Dean’s head off. He backed away and Sam made a protesting sound against his mouth. Dean put a hand on his chest.

“Easy, hey, let’s,” his voice caught for a minute and he tried again, “let’s wait a minute.”

Sam looked a little disappointed, but he nodded. There were no chairs in Bobby’s kitchen, so they sat down on the floor with their backs against the counter. Dean wondered if he really just turned down sex – _sex!_ – in Hell. But just the thought alone was making him a little dizzy. Anything could come out of that black hole that Bobby’s kitchen was floating in and bite him on the ass. Dean cut off that line of thought, waiting for his pulse to quiet down, feeling Sam shake a little next to him. He searched for distraction, which he found by Sam’s leg, in the shape of a plastic bag.

“What’s in the bag?”

Sam showed him: it was a jack-in-a-box, and when Sam pressed down on a lever, out came SpongeBob on a spring. Dean stared at it for a moment, thinking that okay, dreams were weird. SpongeBob wasn’t so bad. He also thought that he shouldn’t have noticed the weird – or, for that matter, felt the fine touch of stubble to the side of his face, the pain of his ribs getting squeezed, the smell of dish soap. The SpongeBob was rocking between them, and not a sound came from outside. Not a sound had been coming from the kitchen either, Dean realized suddenly, except the sound of his own voice. He knew what Sam was saying, and yet Sam didn’t say a word, did he? Not in a real voice.

Dean looked up from the toy to his brother’s face. Sam shifted his eyes away. 

“I didn’t buy this,” Dean said. “You did.”

“I didn’t sell my soul,” Sam said quickly, and it almost sounded like words here, except he was signing. Dean didn’t know a word of sign language, and neither did Sam, last time Dean saw him. “I only paid for a one-time passage.”

Dean eyes and nose started stinging, and he looked away, stared at the SpongeBob instead and waited for it to pass. Three things dropped into his head simultaneously, and each one was enough to almost break him, and all three he had to be very careful not to think about. He had to tell Sam to leave the dead alone and get out, and he couldn’t. He was never going to hear Sam’s voice again. He was maybe going home. 

Dean took the SpongeBob out of Sam’s hands and turned it around. The yellow doll looked close to animate, in this place: its floppy limbs twitched and its eyes rolled round and round. Dean poked at it, and it squawked at him. SpongeBob jack-in-the-box, seriously. Sam could stroll into hell but he couldn’t buy your regular garden variety clown toy.

Sam said in his washed-out voice, “I figured, we can do a switch and run. Leave something in your place, take your soul back up in the box.”

Something heard – out there, in the dark that was Bobby’s living room. Something large hissed and went stomping behind the wall, with a dragging sound like a tail on the floor. Dean made a dash for his tomato knife, but nothing came into the light and the house fell quiet again. 

“That’s a stupid fucking idea,” Dean said. He had to force the words out of his mouth. He knew he should say them but what if—What if Sam just left?

Instead of an answer, Sam pulled his head closer and pressed their foreheads together. He looked like he probably wanted another kiss but he didn’t reach for it, just held Dean’s head against his. After a minute or so, Dean started to relax again, a little bit.

“I’m not sorry,” Sam said. “I’m really not.”

“I’ll get your voice back.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” 

SpongeBob only squawked. Dean clipped its spring and lifted it out of the box. The thing eyed him back. It wasn’t rolling its eyes aimlessly anymore, getting more aware by the minute. Behind the wall, something scratched and sighed. Dean brought SpongeBob’s square head up to his mouth and said in its ear, “Oh my Lord, the stars glitter and the eyes of men are closed. The kings have locked their doors and each lover is alone with his love. Here, I am alone with you.”

The doll looked back at him and squawked, “And each lover is alone with his love.”

“That’s right,” Dean said, although he couldn’t remember the words anymore. He put SpongeBob under the kitchen table. “Keep it up, dude.”

“The stars glitter,” it said in a screechy mechanical voice – the only other real voice in the kitchen besides Dean’s.

Sam was holding the ridiculous painted box, now empty. Dean told him, “You’re gonna be a mute with your brother in a SpongeBob box.”

“Yeah. We’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll get you your voice back, Sam. I promise.”

Sam nodded. SpongeBob cackled. Dean took a deep breath and climbed into the box. Inside, it was very dark.


End file.
